"There are a great many students who are enormously attracted by the idea of a diplomatic career. Or if not in the foreign service as such, certainly a job which takes you out and about internationally and gets you engaged with international policy issues, be they to do with peace and security, aid and development, trade or any one of the innumerable transnational policy issues – from climate change to people trafficking to managing health pandemics – which former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan once described as “problems without passports”.

It’s no surprise that so many young people should want to get into these jobs. They sound inherently fascinating, and they are.

So how can you best prepare yourself for a foreign policy related career? How can you maximise your chances of cracking it in what is always going to be a very competitive field?"

viernes, 22 de abril de 2016

For the Academic Seminar (April 26 to 28):1. Re-state the presenter’s main idea. (33%)2. Say whether if the arguments make sense. (33%)3. Suggest at least one change or addition to their work. (34%)This is a presentation, but you don't need to bring slides or dress up. The order of participation was established on March 31st and may be viewed here. For the Tabula Rasa (April 29-May 3):1. Ask for the floor before participating. (25%)2. Wait for your turn. (25%)3. Direct your participation at “the delegate of” another country or to the entire summit. (25%)4. Keep each participation under 2 minutes. (25%)Please come to class dressed for a formal presentation and prepared to participate according to procotol. We won't be stringent about it, but there will be two kinds of participation and two kinds of intervention:- When you participate, you may ask for the floor to give a statement as part of the summit (these are the ones that must be addressed to the other delegates and for which you will be graded) or you may propose a caucus, which means you get 3 minutes to suspend the Summit and stand up for one-on-one negotiations.

- Simultaneously, you may get information from News Flashes or Secret Messages from your own home government, which I will distribute when the time comes. While News Flashes give general information and may be openly discussed, the information in Secret Messages is only for whoever receives them.

viernes, 15 de abril de 2016

2. Write a 500-word essay where you compare and contrast the experiences of the main characters in both movies and the social realities they deal with, particularly regarding the intersectionality between economic inequality, LGBT rights, women's rights, and racism. Upload it to Blackboard by April 22, 11:59 PM. The link will be in the "Assignments" tab and titled "Essay 10_Freeheld, Paris is Burning". E-mailed essays will get an automatic zero.

2. Write a 500-word essay about how the Mexican healthcare system treats death and grief, and how they should be treated. This will be a normative essay. Upload it to Blackboard by April 11, 11:59 PM. The link will be in the "Assignments" tab and titled "Essay 9_Recordar a los difuntos". E-mailed essays will get an automatic zero.

viernes, 1 de abril de 2016

"At ﬁve-feet-six and a hundred and ten pounds, Queenie Volupides was a sight to behold and to clasp. When she tore out of the house after a tiff with her husband, Arthur, she went to the country club where there was a party going on.

She left the club shortly before one in the morning and invited a few friends to follow her home and have one more drink.

They got to the Volupides’s house about ten minutes after Queenie, who met them at the door and said, “Something terrible happened. Arthur slipped and fell on the stairs. He was coming down for another drink—he still had the glass in his hand—and I think he’s dead. Oh, my God—what shall I do?

The autopsy conducted later concluded that Arthur had died from a wound on the head and conﬁrmed that he’d been drunk."

5. "A Passage to India" (1924) by E. M. Forster. It's about racism and sexism in colonial India. Pretty cool, especially if you liked "To Kill a Mockingbird" and other similar novels.

6. "12 Angry Men" (1957) by Sydney Lumet. It's originally a play, and it's good for looking at biases and the way arguments can be constructed and reconstructed.

7. "Evita" (1996) by Alan Parker. It was originally a Broaday musical, and this is the feauture film with Madonna as Eva Perón. It shows the outside/American view of Argentina in the 20th century. They saw her as more of a celebrity and a tragic figure than a political/elite actor.

8. "Eva Perón" (1996) by Juan Carlos Desanzo. This is the response by the Argentinean government to the musical. It shows Eva Perón as more of a political actor who dealt with the unfairness that women were simply not taken seriously.